What does Remembrance Sunday mean to you? Which wars and conflicts do you bring to this service? Are you remembering comrades or friends from the Second World War, from National Service, from the Falklands, Northern Ireland or Gulf conflicts? Are you anxious about what is happening since 11th September last year? When ever I speak to young Service men and women I am struck by how important this commemoration is. Remembrance has naturally moved on from the two world wars that gave rise to this memorial, though they still count, and if remembrance is to mean anything then we have to move on with it.

There is a stark statistic that since 1945 there has only been one year when no members of the British forces have been killed in active service. Only one year and this is in a period we call peace-time. Since the end of the Second World War there have been conflicts in Korea, Suez, Middle East, and Northern Ireland has been a constant trouble spot for most of my life-time. More recently our forces have been killed in action in the South Atlantic, in the Gulf, in Africa and other places too.

It is as if we make a lot of fuss about remembering but actually don’t remember, because if we did we would make more effort to avoid war and the causes of war. Or perhaps it is that, like the foolish bridesmaids in the gospel reading who didn’t care enough to make sure they had what they needed (Matt 25:1-13), as a species we don’t really care as long as someone else does the dying. That statistic about only one year without a death is a reminder of the fragility of peace. I think that one of the greatest disservices we do to remembrance is to make war films that avoid the real horror of it all. They glory in the action, but lose the point of remembering. Many of the films have no funerals, no images of crying relatives, no memorials or thinking ‘how can we avoid this’. Computer games can also dull us to the full horror of what happens when people are shot or blown up. They create an environment and mind-set where the first and assumed response is a violent one.

This dulling and the assumptions that go with it makes us too ready to reach for violent and macho solutions. The killing and dying after all take place somewhere else and we watch it from a distance where we don’t really see. When we look close up, as we did in those twin towers, as we do when a bomb goes off in a nightclub, it all looks very different. Smart bombs can make us very unsmart and long range missiles or distant conflicts can make us very aloof to what we are doing.

I remember a former Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, who was awarded the Military Cross during the Second World War, talking about war. He said it is always a sign of human failure. It means more peaceful solutions have broken down or not been tried properly. The frightening thing about George Bush’s administration is that they seem so ready to turn someone else’s backyard into a war zone. There seems to be a failure of remembrance there. Wild west terminology and a macho gun culture should alarm us to the dulling and culture of violent solutions.

Remembrance is something deeply rooted in what happens every time we celebrate the Eucharist. In the Communion we recall, or call to mind, all that Jesus said and did, his saving passion and resurrection. We don’t just remember it in the past, we bring it into the present and ask what it has to do with now; where it calls us to go now; what it asks us to be now. The same goes for the things we recall on this Remembrance Sunday. We don’t just think in case we forget them, but we bring it into the present and ask what it has to do with now; where it calls us to go now; what it asks us to be now; how it demands that we pursue peace and commit ourselves to what lies at the roots of peace, rather than being so willing to go for the gun. To fail to do this is actually to forget.

There is in this kind of remembrance an important place for the emotions, to honour the fallen comrades and those who will ‘not grow old as we that are left grow old’ (from For the Fallen). We remember too in the light of the resurrection and our first reading reminded us of this hope (1 Thess 4:13-end). This is the ‘glory that shines upon our tears’ (from For the Fallen). There is a powerful moment at the end of the film Zulu where they look around and take note of who is not there any more, and note that one of them had a brilliant tenor voice. Those who shall not be wearied by age had gifts and were real, rounded people too.

It is incumbent on politicians and those who make war and sue for peace not to throw these lives away on a whim. We all want to think that any deaths are necessary in the cause of freedom and justice. There are times when that is the case, but it is always a sign of human sinfulness that it was necessary. There is a strongly penitential side to remembrance and we confess sins that are often beyond our own individual making. The actions of others can have knock on effects that lead to service personnel risking their lives in conflict. We confess our corporate sins, the ‘shortcomings of the world’ as the introduction to our confession put it at the beginning of this service.

The poem, which is often associated with Remembrance, Laurence Binyon’s For the Fallen, carries some of this. Some of you will have already spotted the references I have made to it. We usually only hear 4 stanzas, but it is a much longer verse. It was written in 1914 about the outbreak of the First World War and 4 stanzas from it have since been used on war memorials throughout Britain and will be read at our War Memorial after this service. If it is read in a true spirit of remembrance then it can be a useful way in to the emotions that surround this day and prompt some thoughts on the culture and assumptions that can make war more likely rather than less likely.

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted:
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end they remain.

Laurence Binyon For the Fallen

© Ian Black 2002

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